Terrorism is a global issue. In the last few decades, several terrorist organizations have surfaced like Al-Qaeda and Isis. They gained a substantial foothold in the Middle East in the last fifteen years implementing their own laws on innocent people, often with violence and insurgency. Countries like the United States have taken Counter-terrorism measures in order to tackle the various problems involved with terrorism to help prevent additional senseless acts of violence and destruction. This was done through either militaristic or political means such as the War in Iraq and Afghanistan and several laws passed during the Bush administration in the early 2000's. Former President George W. Bush Jr. passed numerous policies to counter terrorist acts after the 9/11 attacks. A couple of these changes turned out to be helpful towards the cause, more often however, they violated human rights laws, proving detrimental in thwarting terrorist activities. A good instance of this was when Bush allowed degrading and painful interrogation techniques like forced nudity and waterboarding to gain answers from suspected terrorists. Waterboarding is seen as a torturous method of interrogation that frequently proves useless in gaining intel from those water boarded. Those water boarded experience great stress from feelings of constantly drowning, inducing trauma and suffering.

Bush continued to sign into effect executive orders like in 2007, that allowed government organizations like the CIA to continue carrying out harsh tactics throughout apprehension and interrogation of any suspects thought to be linked to terrorism. [footnoteRef:1] Utilization of harsh techniques such as water boarding to interrogate terrorist suspects not only gives the American government the image of being seemingly cruel, but also deters further cooperation from those they seek information from as well as increase fear and prejudice. While the public readily accepted the new changes brought by the Bush administration due to their desire to end terrorism the counter terrorist measures and the violation of human rights laws created a backlash in the Muslim world. This can be seen with the way the world saw the United States and interacted with American government officials. "Security and human rights norms usually require a balancing act for their contemporaneous application but are often considered to conflict with one another. This is the case, especially when terrorism threats lead the executive branch to temporarily suspend or reduce its human rights obligations." [footnoteRef:2] [1: S. Ahmed, "The 'Emotionalization of The "War On Terror": Counter-Terrorism, Fear, Risk, Insecurity And Helplessness," Criminology and Criminal Justice 15, no. 5 (2015): 545-560.] [2: Myriam Feinberg, "International Counterterrorism -- National Security And Human Rights: Conflicts Of Norms Or Checks And Balances?," The International Journal of Human Rights 19, no. 4 (2015): 388-407.]

Beginning in 2002, the Bush Administration implemented an expansion to what is currently termed extraordinary rendition. Essentially, it permitted CIA agents to kidnap and transport suspected individuals of terrorism to nations like Egypt and Afghanistan for interrogation. Special facilities called "black sites" were secret prisons that existed and operated during this time. Suspects were tortured, attacked, and killed. Although terrorism is an ongoing problem that requires intervention to help avert the killing of innocent lives and disruption of society, it should not be done so in a way that creates further destruction and chaos. Not all apprehended suspects were guilty of terrorist activity and the degree of abuse suffered by some of these suspects demonstrates the requirement of counter terrorist measures to contain preservation of human rights.

By generating fear and hatred within the Muslim population and creating a negative image of the United States on foreign land, it makes those that otherwise would have never considered terrorist involvement to pursue it in order to destroy the ones they deem monstrous. By becoming the very monsters they feared, the United States government created severe backlash and an environment that would breed one of the worse terrorist organizations to date, Isis. Isis only became a threat after the United States began warring in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before then terrorist organizations barely had a foothold in those countries.

The wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq created public outcry amongst the native population as well as created a huge financial crisis in America. Many considered the war on terror as necessary after the 9/11 attacks in order to neutralize and control terrorist threats on a global level. However, it left a population within the countries attacked, with heavy losses, repeated human rights violations, and an upsurge in terrorist activity and insurgency. One interesting fact about Isis is one of the leaders is an Iraqi going by the name of Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali Muhammad al-Badri al-Samarrai. Perhaps he witnessed the way the United States...

Otherwise peaceful individuals become desperate and militaristic. Those affected by the horrors of war, sometimes become ruthless, joining the very thing counter terrorist measures were set up to destroy. While terrorist organizations have horrific agendas, they create control and stability for individuals seeking those things and give them back the power they lose during war. That power is often channeled by leaders and a key strategy that the United States has taken to neutralize terrorist organizations is the assassination of terrorist leaders.
One might this think this an effective means of incapacitating a group. When Barack Obama stated Osama Bin Laden was killed, the nation rejoiced. However, the killing of terrorist leaders does nothing as a counterterrorist measure. Countries like Israel and the United States, enforced decapitation tactics, that sought to capture or assassinate the leaders of known terrorist organizations. Research states leadership decapitation can be counterproductive and ineffective. "Contrary to this conventional wisdom, leadership decapitation significantly increases the mortality rate of terrorist groups, although the results indicate that the effect of decapitation decreases with the age of the group, even to a point where it may have no effect at all." [footnoteRef:3] If anything is to be done to counteract terrorism, it must be done with human rights in mind. A proposed solution is transgovernmental networks. [3: Bryan C. Price, "Targeting Top Terrorists: How Leadership Decapitation Contributes To Counterterrorism," International Security 36, no. 4 (2012): 9-46.]

Transgovernmental networks allow states the use of both informal and formal networks to organize policies via direct links between specialists and mid-level bureaucrats instead of through engagement of diplomacy at the uppermost ranks of government. Networks permit law enforcement, financial and intelligence officials to meet frequently with their overseas counterparts to construct counterterrorism policies inside their particular ranges of proficiency. "They promote sustained, robust and technocratic cooperation and can be easily tailored to specific needs allowing states to shift between multilateral and bilateral cooperation as desired. Universal or even widespread agreement is not needed to move forward with the targeting of specific terrorist groups" [footnoteRef:4]. This may be the best solution to thwart terrorism around the world. [4: Zachary Shirkey, "A Better Way To Combat Terrorism," The National Interest, last modified 2014, accessed December 20, 2015, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/better-way-combat-terrorism-11110?page=2.]

The use of transgovernmental networks can help deal with growing terrorist activity around the world. Still, there are other options that can be implemented alongside transgovernmental networks that will promote better relations among countries as well as create stability and peace within countries most commonly associated with terrorist creation. These counterterrorist strategies aim to preserve human rights as much as possible, remove the fear and anger that comes from terrorist activity, and promote unity among nations. Because if terrorism is to end around, it must begin with realization that people need to be treated a certain way in order to gain progress in eradicating terrorism. If people continue to be tortured and killed, there will never be any true progress made.

An increasing number of articles mention subnational dispersal of armed conflict resting on the suggestion that governmental and political violence generates higher levels of violence, in the same area and spreads to other places. Nevertheless, countries afflicted by civil unrest and violence fail to contain such rebellions with strategies to counteract such activities largely unexplored. Drawing from a calculated model of rises, a study formalized the logic of conflict diffusion as well as were able to originate conditions under which things like state coercion may restrict the range of insurgent violence. Their results pointed to punishment being the worst kind of measure taken, producing a counterproductive effect on neutralization of armed conflict. Denial however, proved most effective. "In the Caucasus, denial is found to be the least inflammatory counter-insurgency option for Russia. For it to succeed, Russia should physically isolate centers of insurgent activity from regions of nonviolence and avoid the temptation of punitive reprisals." [footnoteRef:5] [5: M. D. Toft and Y. M. Zhukov, "Denial and Punishment In The North Caucasus: Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Coercive Counter-Insurgency," Journal of Peace Research 49, no. 6 (2012): 785-800.]

This was seen in France during the Paris attacks in the fall of 2015. Essentially the French government sought to minimalize the effect the attack had on the country in order to reduce…